D&D Court - Death Save Coin, Chill Ragers, & Heating Warforged

Heat metal affects objects only Murph u klutz. I’m starting to think you people aren’t really supreme crit judges…

Dare I say the war forged has a point, sorry if that makes me lose my normal ass dude card Although I think Emily has the right of it, probably not a problem unless it keeps getting repeated

Every girl’s crazy 'bout a normal ass dude 🎵

Ugh yes the Expanse shoutout 💖 so good I gotta go back to it

Can't the dragon just melt the Rod. It's made of iron

Thanks for reminding me again, again to keep rewatching expanse, I’ve stopped for awhile, but kiss it

The mambo number 5 joke was amazing. I will join their campaign!

The rage discussion really makes me think of the same issues with Sneak Attack - common flavor should not outweigh mechanics. I've seen DMs who make playing a rogue unnecessarily difficult because they just read "sneak attack" and assume, without reading the mechanics, that you need to be sneaking to use it - when in reality all you need is some source of advantage. Rage has the same issues - it's commonly flavored with anger, but surpressing anger shouldn't inherently surpress rage. As Sneak Attack has specific mechanics that allow it to happen or disallow it from happening, so does Rage. Don't suppress a class ability because you want to ignore the mechanics of the ability and just focus on the ability's name.

Lot's of people are disagreeing with the calm emotions rule in favor of the DM, but I think they got it right, with several of their arguments. more than anything "the rule of cool goes both ways." If I had a barbarian npc attacking the players and one of the players cast that spell, it would be no fun and destroy creativity to just say, "nuh uh that doesn't work because their rage is emotionless." In the same way, the dm also gets to use those spells creatively sometimes.

this is so backwards, the coin is a weird an unnecessary idea but hiding death saving throws is a really common house rule to prevent meta gaming. it's completely uninteresting to know your ally is fine cause they passed 2 death saving throws and failed 0

The calm emotions ruling sounds like it's based on the name of the spell and not its actual effect...

Regarding hidden death saves, let me say that they are soooo much more suspenseful! Whether it's the DM rolling the d20, or the dying player rolling the d20 with only they and the DM knowng the result, it incredibly raises the stakes on the table. Try it for a session and you'll see.

I specifically wanted to call out the discussion regarding calm emotions and rage. So one of my favorite go to’s when determining whether or not a spell has an effect is to see if there’s another ability on top of the existing ability that provides the additional benefit of preventing a negative effect of a spell. See mindless rage, which makes barbarians immune to charmed or frightened, and since calm emotions requires a charisma saving throw I would call it a charm effect. Given that, there’s a strong argument to say a barbarian that doesn’t have mindless rage could be affected by any charm effect which could inadvertently cause them to end their rage by disallowing them to meet the conditions of maintaining their rage. Charm effects don’t inherently end rage, only the conditions written in the text of rage end rage (you gotta be knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then). However if said barbarian did have mindless rage, the DM was dead wrong and calm emotions should have had no effect. Open to counter arguments.

I'm not a huge fan of your guys ruling for calm emotions canceling out a rage. I think the way calm emotions is written all it does is make somebody indifferent to a specific Target. If they don't attack or get hurt that round it would cancel out the rage but they are just indifferent to that one person they are in different to all the enemies that are near them so they could easily switch targets and still be raging.

I love the idea of a coin being a 1/20 coin and that the player can either take two death saves or get a Nat20 and bounce back up.

infinity train is so good

Enjoyed Emily's ideas for a disarming strategy! I've always wanted to homewbrew the battlemaster's disarming strike so it could disarm the enemy and ALSO throw their weapon 10ft away (imagining it like that moment in a fencing match where the stronger fighter flicks their combatant's sword out of reach) so people can actually get punished for being disarmed.

Yes I love lead pipes

Casting calm emotions to end a rage seems like just metagaming, unless the eladrin was trying to stop the fight altogether.

The dishonorable judges unfortunately failed on the action economy and warforge ruling. Jake must take over the court.

Re swapping weapons, I had a party member drop their bow and unsheath a sword to use it in one turn. Then later that fight a goliath was running across the area blind and rolled a nat 1. Had them trip on, and break the dropped bow. Was a really fun narrative moment!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CPWmHbQDmLT/?utm_medium=copy_link Hire them to do the SVU theme song singing Dun-geon 😂😂😂

Listening to the Mamba No. 5 part now and it's giving me flashbacks to my current DM, who wrote a full campaign (our last one) leading up to a John Cena meme.

I’m gonna have to disagree re: Auto the Warforged. If he’s saying that the armor the DM is trying to use Heat Metal on is part of his body and not being worn, then that goes against the language of Heat Metal—I.e. it works on things being held or worn.

My DM is doing the same thing with death saves except he doesn’t have a cool coin lol. He does all the death saves on his end and won’t tell us a single thing... Doesnt hint to the player how it’s going either. Veeery boring if you’re down because your turn is completely skipped. Even if you stabilize the character he doesn’t tell you if they become stable or if they’re just dead. I think he just wants to have more control but he ends up having all the fun and the players do/know nothing until we’re out of combat.

Re: rage, forget about whether you are talking about anger or animal ferocity - I would make my argument from the physiological effects of calming someone's emotions - heartbeat slows, muscles relax, the whole PNS rest-and-digest bundle of responses are activated. Which isn't compatible with any kind of high-activation, adrenaline-fuelled hyper-vigilant/focused activity. So from that POV, you could absolutely argue that Calm Emotions ends Rage, maybe?

If a warforged wants to avoid Heat Metal he can just put on a robe. You can't target what you can't see (for heat metal anyway).

Normal ass dudes for life.

Depending on what level/subclass the Barbarian is, I think the crit justices are wrong. Path of the Berserker for example gives you the feature at 6th level of being immune to charm effects while raging, and Calm Emotions is a charm so the saving throw doesn't matter. Also at later levels you get Persistent Rage which ends only if you choose to end it or if you fall unconscious. The situation is unique and I think it's just one of those cool ideas that don't work because that's not how the spell/the ability works, similar to when players try to use a spell or ability just outside the rules of how it works because it makes sense if you don't look at raw.

Also just to weigh in the action economy of changing weapons, my DM ruled that this would cost 5ft of movement and I think it's a cool option

I'm really happy to see Emily plug The Expanse two weeks in a row, for weeks my life has been work, play d&d and binge the Expanse

It’s a penny not a quarter in the Batcave.

Can someone explain the mamba #5 references? Completely over my head.

No word of a lie, my friends and I had a campaign in college, and my friend Jack played a halfling monk named Mambo The Fifth.

For the last ruling, the barbarians rage should not end because of calm emotions. The spell doesn’t cancel or calm a lot of emotions despite what the name may imply. It only cancels the charmed or frightened effects or it makes the creature unable to attack other creatures of the casters choice. The barbarian can still be angry, but not at the enemies and this could create an interesting moment where the rest of the party tries to break the casters concentration on the spell to keep the barbarians rage going or else the barbarian could hit one of their party members with an unarmed strike to keep the rage going.

murph is spicy this ep and I’m here for it

my takeaway from this episode is naddpod: normal ass dude (d) pod

fwiw the heat armor warforged ruling has a word of (kind of) god tweet https://twitter.com/Dan_Dillon_1/status/1219181227086774272

Infinity train is absolutely fantastic, thanks for the recommendation!

So a lot of you are saying you can't heat metal a Warforged's Armor but you 100% can. the Warforged incorporates armor into itself. It still has armor on. It can be heated. The armor is manufactured. Warforges themselves were manufactured as well too.

Caldwell, bestie, Batman has a giant penny... Not a quarter

This is a deep cut, but Lowly Bailiff jake going for coffee with write-in Nico brings back a deeply buried memory of a Jake and Amir sketch episode where Jake attends a blind double date at Emily/Murph's house and his potential love interest is named Nico. If I recall correctly, Emily immediately gets drunk and harasses Jake, and Murph ends up with shit all over his hands and tries to kill Jake. The sketch is punctuated by Jake screaming "Nicooooo" into the night. In other news, the free object interaction drop /or/ draw has the nice risk-reward tradeoff of being able to switch weapons without wasting an action, but leaves you unarmed while it's not your turn, so you can't take opportunity attacks with a weapon.

In the “ DM vs Rage” rage is a biological ability Rage = “battle focus” isn’t accurate. Unless flavored, a person going into a “rage” i.e. zen fighting ability, those are monks

The (dis)honorable judges are WRONG about the warforged-heat metal problem. If the armor integrates to become part of the *character* then it cannot be targeted. Magic that directly physically affects targeted characters is much higher level (eg: power word kill). Find a different route of attack on Otto.

I'm just here for all the Heat Metal comments because none of the judges decided to read the spell 🥳

Quote of this ep for me: Rule of Cool Had to Go Both Ways. Thanks Duncle.

Not just any object but a “manufactured” object. War forged do not have that, it’s grown from the body that’s kinda the point.

Heat Metal says a "manufactured metal object" it cannot be used on creatures.

Honestly this show would be nothing without Jake.

These are the best, I get so excited when I see the calls for cases.

I insist on free action stow/draw weapons in combat as a DM. I like it for the cinematic stuff they were talking about in the episode, but also it means that if they stow at the end of a turn and draw a new weapon at the beginning of the next turn, if they get an opportunity attack in-between they have to just punch

With the coin case, the coin is kinda weird aesthetic, levelling out the nat 20/1 is kinda interesting because you can only ever stabalise but there will always be at least 3 throws. But hidden death saves is a new thing that’s trending (i saw it on tiktok) so players aren’t metagaming around death saves. Players play differently if someone doesnt have any fails because they can always just bring them back up after a fail. Murph is right about it having an effect on the action economy, the idea is that it’s more true to life if the characters don’t know. And the dm would still let them know if they stabalise.

1st case: I’m now just imagining a fight where they sheath after every attack/multi attack and then draw the same weapon 😂😂

Caldwell saying “a Paso Robles blend” about the wine stain made my heart sing! It’s my hometown. (Though it’s a Buffalo Bleu Cheese situation where you have to say it Robe-uhls because all the locals say it white as fuck.)

Yo we need to roast every one but Jake! These justices are out of control

Thanks keeping me company in the long vaccination line here in Melbs! Love D&D court eps!

I know you passed it as a joke, but you are onto something with the "changing weapon as an action" part. You totally should make a character that specializes in disarming - or even have someone with heat metal on weaponry. If the DM says that person just picks up the sword and attacks, he should not be able to, because he switched from unarmed to sword. Better yet, if he says this doesnt count, just drop your weapon you want to switch in the beginning of combat and pick it up as free action, since that's how the world works

Is a warforged manufactured? Heat metal reads that it has to be a manufactured metal object

Hey guys, just wondering why these episodes are shorter than the usual play through ones? Surely we can get full hour and a half ones! Absolutely love the content in any case

"Guac in the door"

lowly???!! how dare

I think the Heat Metal question is that the spell targets metal "objects" and the Warforged trait says "To don armor, you must incorporate it into your body", so if the armor is part of your body is it still an object that's targetable? Tbh I'm not sure but feel like I still agree with your end decision

This is great, but does it mean no new episode this week?

Thanks Murph!

Heck yes

Oh hell yes

Late night treat!!!!!

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT AND MY HEART